Rural well being documentary earns Peabody Award for Georgia Southern professor

Might 1, 2025

Georgia Southern College Affiliate Professor Matthew Hashiguchi has received a Peabody Award for his documentary, “The Solely Physician,” which focuses on rural well being and the companies offered by a single physician in southwest Georgia. 

The Peabody Awards are prestigious accolades in storytelling throughout tv, radio, streaming and different digital mediums. Classes for profitable a Peabody embrace journalism, social video, interactive documentary, gaming and extra. The practically hour-long function obtained the award within the Public Service class, which acknowledges initiatives that deal with or reply to public well being issues, improve public engagement or educate the general public. 

For Hashiguchi, the award represents a private and profession accolade. 

“This award isn’t only a skilled achievement, but in addition represents a second in my life the place I turned a father,” mentioned Hashiguchi. “I began filming proper earlier than my first daughter was born, and completed proper after the second. Whereas this award is an unbelievable acknowledgment of my work, it means much more to me as a priceless second from their childhood.”

The documentary focuses on Karen Kinsell, M.D., the only doctor serving 3,000 residents in Clay County, Georgia, close to the Georgia-Alabama border. The movie spotlights the plight of a neighborhood in want of medical help and the devoted physician combating to maintain her clinic’s doorways open. Hashiguchi delves into Kinsell’s sacrifices for her clinic’s operations, revealing her dedication to her sufferers.

“Dr. Kinsell will get calls at residence in any respect hours of the day and evening,” Hashiguchi mentioned. “She, at occasions, has needed to pay the payments from her personal checking account. However I’d say the most important sacrifice is that she’s a physician who doesn’t have breaks.”

The ultimate lower of “The Solely Physician” is a bit totally different from the angle Hashiguchi took when he started work on it a number of years in the past. He initially began the venture to higher perceive the dangers related to maternal well being care and childbirth when he and his spouse have been anticipating their first little one. Via his work, he realized of a extra advanced challenge of well being care entry in rural communities.

The documentary first premiered on the PBS program Reel South and is now out there internationally on Al Jazeera’s documentary collection “Witness.”

Hashigchi’s work earned him a 2019 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund award and a 2021 American Tales Documentary Fund award from Factors North Institute. The movie’s world premiere passed off on the 2023 Sizzling Docs Worldwide Documentary Movie Competition in Toronto, Canada, and was awarded Greatest Documentary Function on the 2024 South Georgia Movie Competition, Greatest Function on the 2023 Newburyport Documentary Movie Competition and Award of Advantage on the 2023 College Movie and Video Affiliation Convention.

His rise to media prominence wasn’t on his radar early in his educational profession. He described himself as a “C scholar,” and nonetheless sees himself as that younger boy combating math and science programs. With one of many nation’s highest media honors, he can present his college students new paths to success in addition to the abilities it takes to win a Peabody.

“I would like my college students to know the way I failed and know that I struggled,” he mentioned. “I inform them that in the event that they wish to excel, they actually must put in onerous work. That’s very a lot who I’m now as I dedicate myself to those movies.”